Holocaust attorney seeks interest payment

A lawyer who sparked outrage over his multimillion-dollar fees for a Holocaust reparations case has demanded interest.

Burt Neuborne, a New York University law professor, in court papers filed last week said he was due an additional $300,000 because two years have elapsed since he originally filed for his fee.

Last month, a federal judge ordered that Neuborne be paid $3.1 million for his work. The additional request is based on an interest calculation of 4.72 percent.

In a letter to the judge, an attorney for Neuborne said such a payment “is entirely consistent with the litigation of this particular matter.”

Neuborne’s original fee request of $4.76 million provoked outrage among Holocaust survivors and a damning editorial in the New York Times, which called the request “troubling” and “unseemly.”

Critics said Neuborne was not only being greedy but had led survivors to believe he was working pro-bono on the case. Neuborne countered that he did indeed work for free in winning the original settlement, $1.25 billion from Swiss banks accused of profiting from the deposits of victims of the Nazis, but not for his subsequent years of work administering the settlement.

Sam Dubbin, a Miami lawyer representing several survivors who objected to the original fee request, has written to the court opposing the interest payment.